MORE Shiny

My productivity level is fast approaching zero, thanks to OfficerGleason over there.

Just before lunch, he introduced me to Goodreads. Now, I've been avoiding this kind of site - there's also the intriguing and Gaiman-touted Library Thing, and I'm sure there are others along the same lines. I suppose the user profiles at Amazon and the like count as well.

It's not that I'm avoiding them because I don't like them.

Quite the opposite.

I'm avoiding them because I love the idea of them - listing books I have, seeing what other people are reading, finding recommendations...

That noise you hear is me going "squee" (ignore the softer "thud" of my productivity hitting the floor - I'll clean that up later.)

So, now that I'm friended, well...

There's me. Just a list for now - far from complete, and still a work in progress. Reviews on some of them soon to come, I hope. I feel odd having so many that are four and five stars, but that's also because (I think) these are books that I do love, so of course my favorites are coming to mind. I'm sure there will be more twos and threes (and, yes, even the occasional one) when I'm actually sitting in front of my bookshelves and inputting from home.

The one complaint I have so far - always, with the links to the chains. Goodreads can even pull the list of things you've ordered from your Amazon profile, if you want it to. Part of me wants to boycott sites like this that don't link to indie stores, but that feels like cutting off my nose to spite my face.

I wonder how indie bookstores can best take advantage of sites like this. Most likely, the best way would be for a bookstore to start its own profile, and in every review, link to its own website. I'm just not sure how keen Goodreads would be on that - they very likely make a profit of books that are purchased through an Amazon referral. Something to ponder, at least, while I'm on my uploading spree.

Classics + Technology = WIN

I have this running list of classics I want to read that I didn't get around to in high school and college. Sometimes it feels like I'll never get around to them. My job requires me to live almost six months in the future when it comes to books - I'm reading and selling things that don't come out for another season. Plus, there are so many books by writers I love out on the shelves already, even when I'm reading current titles, I'm playing catch-up.

So, while I'm thinking half a year ahead and trying to keep up on good things from other publishers that are hitting the shelves now, I also have one eye on the past, and keep wishing I had time to read all the books that, for one reason or another, never made it onto my required reading lists in school. Part of that's my own fault - I spent most of my college years in the 17th century. So, Milton? Check. Shakespeare? Check. Jonson, Marlowe, Donne? Check, check, and check.

But Mark Twain?

*crickets*

I have no idea how I made it out of ninth or tenth grade without ever being assigned The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Now that I think about it, my high school English classes were a ton of Hawthorne, Dickens, and the Brontes. We read some of Twain's short stories, but never the books he's most famous for.

Then, once I started college, I took a course - British Authors to 1800 - with the most amazing professor ever. From there out, I tried taking at least one class of his each semester: The Metaphysical Poets, the Cavalier Poets, Shakespeare's Tragedies ("Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:/ Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so/ That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!"). I probably could have (and probably should have) added a concentration in that period to my major, but I never got around to asking what it would require.

I did take other lit courses, including at least one in American lit, but again, no Twain. Maybe the professors figured that we'd already studied him a thousand times and wanted to expose us to other writers - I have no issue with that. (Although, if there's one work I was assigned more than any other, it's Beowulf. I swear I read that for at least one class a year from freshman year in high school up through my college graduation.)

So, because there are apparently other people in the world like me - wanting to read these things, but never enough time in the day - the folks over at Daily Lit have come up with a brilliant plan. They've broken up books into 500-word chunks. You choose a book,they'll email a fragment to you each day. You can set it to arrive daily, weekdays only, or Monday/Wednesday/Friday. If you read your piece and have time for the next one, you can have it sent immediately.

I have the first installment of Tom Sawyer sitting in my inbox. Time for a test drive.

A Failed Attempt at Humor

This PW poll on banning books made me twitch.

I assume it's supposed to be a light-hearted sort of question: if you could ban a book, which would it be and why? Whoever came up with it is playing off of the OJ controversy and (it would seem) is not a fan of Rosie O'Donnell, either.

Normally, that sort of thing is a party game, an icebreaker, or something you do to allieviate boredom on a long car ride - if you could have dinner with any historical figure, living or dead, who would it be? If you were trapped on a desert island and could only take five CDs, which would you choose?

But... "What books would you ban?"

It chills me to think someone in the industry is entertaining the idea at all, and encouraging others to do so. The majority of the responders seem to be as horrified as I am.

Not only is it an invitation (no matter how tongue-in-cheek) to promote banning - some people will take it as an endorsement of such - it's also mean-spirited, calling on readers to throw out titles of books they didn't like and presumably trash them.

I know. The name of this blog is "Books That Don't Suck." Chances are, at some point, I'll say something mean about those books that I believe do suck. I hope that when that day comes I can balance my snark with honest criticism, not just bitchiness for bitchiness' sake.

Actually, as the title states, I'd much rather talk about books that don't suck - titles I enjoyed, that I think others could fall into and pass around ("Hey, have you read this? You should!")

But I will never, ever, encourage the banning of a book. Will I question why this or that got published? Or why fifty thousand readers are drooling over something I find to be complete drivel? Yes. I still won't suggest a book be banned, no matter how bad I think it is. Chances are, if I think something's bad, it's either poorly written (by my admittedly snobby standards) or in poor taste.

Perhaps the person who thought up this question for the daily talkback poll thought readers would chuckle and have a good time with it. What he or she neglected to consider, though, is what banning a book implies.

If you ban a book, you're saying no one should be able to read it. No one should be allowed to crack it open, read the words, and make their own decisions about the material contained within. You're saying it shouldn't be in libraries, it shouldn't be in bookstores, it shouldn't be in any place people can find it. You're deciding what is appropriate or inappropriate for someone else, taking that choice away from them.

Had the poll question been "Which book do you wish you'd never read?" I wouldn't be so peeved. There are several books I've read where I've turned the last page and said, "I want those six hours back." But for someone to ask us to suggest that books should be banned because they weren't to our liking? Never.

That's not okay. That's not cute. That's not funny.

Till Shade Is Gone, Till Water Is Gone

The sf/f world suffered another huge loss. Robert Jordan died yesterday. He'd been fighting amyloidosis and was, as he said in his blog posts, determined to beat it and to finish the series that's held so very many fans' imaginations over the years.

According to the webmaster of one of his biggest fansites, the series will still continue. What form it will take remains to be seen. Right now, the community is busy grieving its loss and celebrating his life.

I picked up the Wheel of Time series in college because my friends were all talking about it. They had theories about what would happen in the next few books and kept censoring themselves or referring to things in the vaguest sense they could so they wouldn't spoil it for me. It must have been either just after A Crown of Swords was published or in the months leading up to The Path of Daggers - by the time tPoD hit the shelves in hardcover, I was all caught up and theorizing right along with them.

Back then, I wasn't much of a fantasy reader, unless it was an Arthurian setting. I was a horror girl, burying my nose in the newest King (and tossing out Dark Tower theories the way the guys did with WoT), tearing through anything that might give me a scare. People had been recommending Jordan to me for years - there were a couple of avid fans among the bookstore employees and customers who insisted I'd enjoy them. So, when I finally broke down and started reading The Eye of the World, I didn't know if I'd like it.

Turned out, my friends, co-workers and customers were all right. I was hooked. The Arthurian references were probably a help - characters named Elayne, Gawyn, Galad, Lan, Nynaeve, Morgase, a city called Caemlyn. A sword in a stone. By the time I finished the first book and moved on to The Great Hunt, I was enthralled by the characters, the story and the world.

My favorite book in the series was the sixth, Lord of Chaos. Egwene, easily my favorite female character, comes into her own. Nynaeve finally breaks through her block. The next few books bogged down for me. I won't pretend that I've loved them all or that I haven't bitched about too much time spent on clothing descriptions, or that I wasn't tired of the Aes Sedai acting like frightened novices when other women stand up to them. The later books got slow. The world is huge; there are more than five main characters now. What started out as the story of Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene and Nynaeve has expanded far beyond them. There are whole nations and factions swept up in the plot, and I can't imagine being able to keep a tight rein on them when they're all vying for a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter of their own.

Even with my nitpicking, I'd have been in line for the final book's laydown to find out what happens to the world that first pulled me back to fantasy. He's had the last chapter written since the book began, and reportedly recorded many, many notes. Perhaps I'll still see that book.

If I hadn't read Jordan, I don't know that I'd have found George RR Martin, or Steven Erikson. Both came highly recommended from the fans at wotmania. I read the RJ newsgroup for a while, and from there discovered Making Light.

I'm not sure what it is that sets the sf/f community apart from other fandoms (although, perhaps I should expand this out to mean the whole speculative fiction world, because I don't know that I'd call Stephen King an sf/f author, even though the Dark Tower books and The Eyes of the Dragon are certainly fantasy, not horror...). Other bestselling authors, who are what I guess you'd call mainstream, sometimes forget that their readership makes them successful. There are nightmare stories about these men and women being horrible to booksellers, fans, anyone, simply because they're rockstars in the world of popular fiction.

But then you look on this side of the fence, and there are people like Martin, King, Michael Connelly, Christopher Moore, and, yes, Robert Jordan, who are so very involved with their fans and are so very beloved for it. You can tell the difference between authors who see fans only as "people who buy my books" and ones who remember that we're real people.

It's been a long time since I've really kept up with the WoT community - I was always a lurker, never a poster - but I'm there today, reading the condolences and farewells at Making Light and Wotmania and Dragonmount, and getting teary when I see how positively he affected peoples' lives. Some people met their spouses through the community, some people were having tough times in their lives and the books helped them through. That, right there, is the greatest measure of his success.

I know I'm about to echo what I said last week, for Madeleine L'Engle, but I've nothing more eloquent to say:

Farewell, Mr. Jordan. And thank you.

And the fire with all the strength it hath

I am currently in a bit of a funk.

Madeleine L'Engle has died.

I remember picking up A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door and losing large chunks of my days as I devoured them. It was summertime when I discovered them - I remember sitting on a chair in my mother's office, reading while she did her work. I had to have been... ten? Twelve? I couldn't have been much older than that, or I'd have been allowed to stay home by myself.

My father worked nights so he'd be home when I got out of school. He was home all day during the summer. But some days, he'd be gone before we woke up, off to drive the trains for overtime pay. I'd pack a pile of books and make sandwiches for my mother and I, and go into the office with her. I spent my day reading or helping her with some of her duties - faxing, filing, photocopying. There was this old typewriter at one of the desks, mostly used for invoices that needed carbon copies, but no one ever really needed it.

When I started reading A Swiftly Tilting Planet, I spent an afternoon on that thing memorizing Patrick's Rune and banging it out on the keys. I think fifteen-year-old Charles Wallace Murry might have been the first character from a book I had a crush on. (I'd say he was my first crush on a fictional character, but I'm pretty sure I had a thing for Green Lantern when I was a wee lass watching Superfriends. Shut up.)

Somehow, other books came along and pushed Madeleine L'Engle off my radar - I read Arms of the Starfish some time later, and then no more of her books for at least a decade.

Only a year or two ago did I learn there was a fourth book in the Time Quartet. I know, I should hang my head in shame. I was afraid that something would have changed from when I'd first read her books, way back in elementary school, that now that I was somewhere in my mid-twenties, I'd find the books childish, that some or all of the magic would be gone. I opened the pages of Many Waters with a mix of excitement and trepidation, not wanting a fond memory to be tarnished.

Turns out, I had nothing to fear. The twins Sandy and Dennys transported me along with them to the days before the Great Flood. I was just as enraptured by her words at twenty-seven as I was at ten.

I realize, too, that I have yet to read the last book (as far as I know) of the series, An Acceptable Time. It was rereleased earlier this year, and I'll be picking it up this weekend. Actually, I'm fairly certain I gave away my copies of the whole series a long time ago, so I'll likely be buying several of her books.

Farewell, Mrs. L'Engle. And thank you.

So Much for That

Oh, well. Barnes & Noble is selling it after all.

It's in response to customer demand - the book was up at the top of the preorder list on their site, so it follows that they'd see a reason to bring it into the stores.

And since this seems to be the first time Beaufort has done anything this on this scale, I can also understand wanting to get the books in stores for the first wave - yes, publishers can get reprints in pretty quickly, but for someone new to the game, better to have it in stock to start than wait while everyone else sells it.

Still, though, I'd appreciated what seemed like them taking a stand of a sort.

Now, granted, it's awfully hard for a national corporation to declare itself on one side of an issue or another - the last thing a retailer wants to do is alienate its customers. Some places can - you can see CEOs endorsing candidates, or making donations to a cause in the company's name - but for a bookstore, where you're supposed to be able to walk in and find shelves and shelves of information, it's an interesting conflict.

Do you refuse to stock books whose views you disagree with and, in a sense, prevent your customers from deciding for themselves on an issue? Or do you carry them and put money in the pockets of people you sneer at when they're panelists or guests on news shows you watch?

Indies have a bit more leeway with that - there are bookstores across the country whose whole existence is based on a political leaning. They're situated in communities who share similar views. B&N, Borders and Amazon can't do that - and really, their employees are scattered all across the country; there's no way to declare a corporate stance without potentially alienating your staff as well as your customers.

So, nice try, B&N. I won't say I agree with the decision, but I understand.